by Lia Sciortino
HIV/AIDS is Far and Near
Top Stories | Reproductive Health | China
This village in Zhenkang county, located in the south-west of China, is near the notorious Golden Triangle, an area between Myanmar, Thailand and Laos that is the world's centre of drug production and trafficking.
It is just on the border of Yunnan province with Myanmar, next to the area that is under the jurisdiction of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, one of the ethnic armed forces in Myanmar that in 1989 reached a ceasefire with the Myanmar government. After that reconciliation agreement, this 1,960 km area that includes Kokang became known as Special Region I of Shan state (north).
Mu Zaihua, 25, is a math teacher at Tianbawan primary school here, where he has been teaching for six years. During the summer vacation of 2002, he took part in an AIDS prevention knowledge training course, carried out in a border area environment where drugs users share needles and are at risk of HIV/AIDS. The government has already put HIV/AIDS education in textbooks and this is being emphasised in the schools near the border areas.
"In the village doctor's house, we often see the data on preventing AIDS. We know a bit about AIDS and we feel that in actuality, AIDS is far from us. There are some people who use drugs here, but we have heard about nobody who got AIDS," Teacher Mu said here, in this small village some 830 kilometres south of Kunming, capital of Yunnan.
In the past, the village where Teacher Mu's home is located had only one pass leading to the place under the jurisdiction of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, including Kokang county, located seven km from the border.
Later, the residents of Teacher Mu's village planted sugarcane across a large area. And to develop a market to sell the sugarcanes, the village built many roads to Myanmar.
The economy in Yunnan's border area is more prosperous than that of northern Myanmar, so there are not too many young people who go over to Myanmar. However, there are minority groups who have lived in the border area for a very long time, and even though their relatives and good friends are separated by the political border, they continue to have very good relationships and visit one another frequently. Sometimes, youngsters follow their friends and relatives across the border to Myanmar to visit or to do some short-term work.
Cross-border trade between China and Myanmar has also been on the rise since the eighties.
In spring, coquettish poppy flowers can be seen in the Kokang region. The history of opium cultivation here is more than 150 years old. The low income of people also adds to the attractiveness of growing opium as a source of livelihood. As for these Kokang armed forces, they needed money to finance their military campaign, so it was a situation of 'using the drugs to maintain the army, and the army protecting the drug production and transportation'.
Myanmar's Kokang is a desolate place. Majority of the shops on the street are casinos, and there were very few grocery stores or other businesses. During the day, the streets are very quiet. Only the casinos are full of people, gambling excitedly.
Referring to the pain that drugs have brought to Nansan's people, Mu Zaihua recalled how, when he was a student, he had a classmate who was the math teacher's son.
His grades were excellent, but he later took up the drug habit. By the time the family found out about this, the child's drug addiction had become very serious. At his worst moments, he looked mad, rolling about on the ground. In order to get him away from the addiction, his elderly father, in tears, would use an iron chain to tie him and keep him at home. Everyday, he brought his son something to eat and drink, caring for him. Now, his son has stayed away from the drug habit for two years.
"In the streets of Nansan town, there is a person who uses drugs. He is pale, less than 20 years old, people said he is dying," Teacher Mu said. "My primary-school classmate always asked me for some money when he met me. Because I did not know he was an addict, I gave some money the first few times. But later, after I got to know what he was doing, I gave him no money."
Having graduated from the teachers' college in the region, Teacher Mu is among those who have received high education in the village. He said, "Young people in Nansan have heard and seen too many tragedies brought by illegal drugs. From their childhood, they understand to that they have to cherish their lives, they know they must stay far away from drugs."
There are more than 1,000 people in the village where Teacher Mu lives, but only one person who has been found with heroin use, he says. This man got into drugs while he was doing business across the border in Northern Myanmar, and made friends with drug users.
In recent years, more and more of Nansan's young people have gone to Myanmar to work or do business. Teacher Mu thinks that in such a risky environment for drug use and HIV/AIDS, prevention depends mainly on people's self-respect and love for themselves.
In April 2001, the school organised a trip for its teachers to visit an anti-drug memorial, completed in December 2000, in the old street in Kokang region. This visit made Teacher Mu feel that "as a matter of fact, the AIDS threat is not far from us."
There, over the border in Myanmar, the local people said that several people with HIV/AIDS have already died. Anxiously, Teacher Mu says, if Nansan's young people, who have gone out to work and crossed the border and get into drug use and sharing needles, do not have the knowledge to prevent HIV/AIDS, they may be at risk of getting sick.
"AIDS is like a plague, people must prevent it like they prevent the use of drugs. It is very important that children get to know its evil and how to prevent it," he adds.
Yang Yaoping, from Xinhua News Agency, wrote this article under the IPS/Rockefeller media fellowship 'Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation'.